marco@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU (the wharf rat) (06/04/86)
In article <14133@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes: > I'm directing followups to net.news.group only. I apologize to > the readers of net.{suicide,rumor} for not having any worthwhile > {train schedules,Shelli rumors} to post, but them's the breaks. > > >But this morning I found 4 or 5 articles, all intended to be humourous > >(at a 6-year-old level), having nothing whatsoever to do with the subject > >of the newsgroup. Activities like this will kill the net faster than > >problems of volume. > > But just what do you mean by worthwhile postings? Why should > we judge the quality of net.suicide by *your* sense of humor? > I get more fun and enjoyment out of net.suicide (and net.rumor) > than I do from any other newsgroups, as do many other people. > Part of the reason is the very idea of newsgroups whose actual > activity runs skew to its stated purpose puts me in a subversive > humor mood, the likes of which I can't get anywhere else. I > am against the reformation, for example, of net.bizarre, since > I find net.{rumor,suicide} are much more enjoyable than the > bizarre mailing list. Just having a stated purpose puts an > abstract constraint on all the bizarreness, twisting it into > something even more bizarre and humorous than it would have > been otherwise. On the assumption that .news.group will have missed the original, I have included most of it. Would you feel the same way if people started posting multi-hundred-line flames and questionable jokes in net.math ? What would _your_ reaction be if the signal-to-noise in your favorite groups suddenly began to approach zero because some bizzaroid decided that it would be cute to hold cross-country flaming contests ? I don't realy care about .suicide; I've always felt it was kind of a waste, but I OBJECT to this sort of thing in groups that have always held to their charter. MUST you turn everything into net.bizzare ? This sort of behavior makes it difficult to justify carrying any news. W.rat
weemba@brahms.UUCP (06/05/86)
I am directing followups back to net.news.group--I have no idea what Mr Rat was trying to prove by cross posting. > On the assumption that .news.group will have missed the >original, I have included most of it. [W RAT] It *was* posted to net.news.group. You could have just as easily referred net.news.adm readers over--I suspect the one readership is mostly a subset of the other anyway. Please don't overquote, Mr Rat, not when there's too much volume as it is, and then you proceed to attack strawmen *despite* your heavy quoting! Why was this posted to net.news.adm anyway? To warn all the net.administrators that some bizarroid is trying to take over the net? If you read what I wrote, there was no such nonsense. I already know you think I'm a "PINHEAD", Mr Rat, but please stick to what I say in the future instead of your ersatz vision of me, and I'll see little need to call you idiotic names in return. No need to be embarrassed, of course, lots of people have flamed me for things I've never come close to saying. >What would _your_ reaction be if the signal-to-noise in your >favorite groups suddenly began to approach zero because some >bizzaroid decided that it would be cute to hold cross-country >flaming contests ? Since when have I *advocated* cross-country flaming contests? (As opposed to *participated*.) I was defending the existing bizarreness in net.{rumor,suicide}, which bizarreness I believe is the sole reason that they are being moved into talkgroups, since these groups *fail* the other criteria that have been proposed. net.suicide is particularly low in volume. Oh by the way. There are no flaming contests in net.suicide, first appearances to the contrary. Just lots of black humor. I'm a Becketthead, if you don't mind. > I don't realy care about .suicide; I've always >felt it was kind of a waste, but I OBJECT to this sort of thing >in groups that have always held to their charter. Is this a self-contradiction? You don't care about one group, and then tell us you object anyway? I'm confused. No one has ever told me just what qualifies as an acceptable rumor--Andy Beals and I have discussed this via e-mail many many times before. :-) Frankly, I find net.rumor rather informative at times, with all sorts of random discussions from CD vs records to exploding capacitors to great facts about John Tyler to strange song lyrics etc etc. > [...] MUST you >turn everything into net.bizzare ? This sort of behavior makes >it difficult to justify carrying any news. Where the hell, Mr Rat, did I ever advocate turning everything into net.bizarre? Indeed, just what is the title of this very article? The one that I originally posted? I'll save you the trouble of restarting this article: Subject: Re: In praise of net.biz--I mean net.{rumor,suicide} ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ You have contributed a random rumor to net.rumor recently, so I don't think you have complaints about that group being bizarre. The point is not to invade the whole network, but to confine bizarreness to known and agreed upon places. I never saw net.bizarre, only mail.bizarre. Comparing that with net.{rumor,suicide}, which two I find far more entertaining, I asserted that having a charter that one has to keep up a pretense of following seems to have a salubrious effect on the bizarreness. This essentially was all I said in my previous posting. If you read net.test, you'll have seen that I've contributed ONE article total in the past month or two--asking that it NOT be turned into a bizarre group. True, my article was a bit bizarre, but I meant what I said. In particular, I've refused to join up with the other well-known bizarroids over there, and I would hate to see net.test turned into talk.test. OK? ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
robert@weitek.UUCP (06/06/86)
In article <345@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU>, marco@andromeda.RUTGERS.EDU (the wharf rat) writes: [... a lot of quoted material. Deleted for brevity...] > On the assumption that .news.group will have missed the > original, I have included most of it. > Would you feel the same way if people started posting > multi-hundred-line flames and questionable jokes in net.math ? > What would _your_ reaction be if the signal-to-noise in your > favorite groups suddenly began to approach zero because some > bizzaroid decided that it would be cute to hold cross-country > flaming contests ? > [... and so on...] > W.rat Has anyone estimated the percent of postings that are complaints about what other people are posting? It seems that every prig on the net spends his time lowering the signal-to-noise level by blathering on about the signal-to-noise ratio. These self-important guardians of the net don't seem to have any ethics about it, either. They'll include long articles are part of their complaints about people who include long articles, bitch about posting to inappropriate newsgroups in inappropriate newsgroups (you shouldn't bitch about postings in net.rumor unless your complaint is itself a rumor. Have some respect!), and generally flap about and squawk a lot. These stuffed shirts are the very bizarroids that they complain about. Their sole function on the net seems to be reducing the S/N ratio of people's favorite newsgroups by indulging in cross-country flaming contests. How about creating a talk.hypocrites or talk.prigs for these people? -- Robert Plamondon UUCP: {turtlevax, cae780}!weitek!robert